THERE WERE EIGHT of them. Eight riders who all bore the same allegiance to Don Miguel Sanchez that their fallen comrade Pedro Ruiz had shared. They, like the settlers they sought, had heard the brief salvo hours earlier when the sun had been high. The sound of two gunshots had lasted barely longer than the beat of a heart and yet their echoes had travelled ten miles along the unnamed valley’s high-walled sides.
Each of the vaqueros in turn had been drawn by the invisible strings of curiosity away from the dense woods to either side of the creek and started their long ride together to the very end of the lush valley.
A million stars had replaced the blue sky long before the eight horsemen had managed to reach the place where the merciless desert lay, just beyond the mouth of the fertile valley. Even the dim light of the stars could not conceal the total dissimilarity between the two lands. Water sprayed up from the hoofs of the powerful mounts as their masters drove them through the shallow waters to where the sound of shooting had come from hours earlier. For a moment none of them could see anything untoward. Then the lead rider stood in his stirrups and eased back on his reins.
It was Pepe Gomez who had drawn rein when his black stallion had suddenly shied. The violent and abrupt refusal of the mount to go any further would have thrown most riders from their saddles, but not Gomez. The experienced vaquero steadied his spooked horse as his seven companions stopped around him.
Gomez balanced and looked just ahead of the line of riders at something on the wet soil just ahead of them.
There was an unnerving aroma hanging on the air and the eight horses had sensed it long before their masters.
Each unnerved animal clawed at the ground with its hoofs and attempted to back away.
‘What is wrong, Pepe?’ one of the other horsemen asked.
Gomez held his powerful animal in check, then raised a long finger and pointed to what looked like a black log on the soil close to the edge of the creek.
‘There!’ Gomez said. ‘See it, amigos?’
‘It is just a log or something, Pepe.’
‘Smell the air, my friend,’ Gomez said knowingly. ‘Logs do not smell of death.’
One of the vaqueros dropped from his saddle and tossed his reins to Gomez.
‘I will look,’ he said.
The seven mounted men watched as the vaquero walked through the strange bluish starlight towards the black object. Then they saw him turn in disbelief.
‘It is Pedro!’ he gasped.
Gomez looked around the area and then back at his fellow riders. He sighed heavily.
‘What are you looking for, Pepe?’
‘Where is his horse?’ Gomez asked curiously. ‘Where is Pedro’s magnificent horse? It would never leave him.’
All eight men searched the darkness for any sign of Pedro Ruiz’s palomino.
There was none.
‘Someone has killed Pedro and stolen his stallion,’ another of the vaqueros said.
Gomez dismounted and walked to where Ruiz’s body lay. He had never liked the vaquero and had secretly feared him for years but he still knew that there was an unwritten law that he and his men all lived and died by. When one of your own is killed, it was your duty to avenge your fallen comrade.
Gomez knelt and turned the body over until it lay on its back. The lifeless eyes were dull. The vaquero reached over and closed Ruiz’s eyes with his long fingers. Gomez then looked at the body carefully. He wanted to discover how this ruthless man had met his death.
To his utter surprise he could see just one well-placed bullet hole.
The vaquero’s gun was still in Ruiz’s stiffening hand. Gomez pulled the gun free and opened its chamber to inspect the bullets in its cylinder. He knew that Don Miguel Sanchez’s top gun always kept his weapon fully loaded. Only one brass casing showed that it had been struck by the firing-pin on the gun hammer. The five other bullets were untouched and intact.
‘Pedro fired only one bullet, mi amigos,’ he informed the other vaqueros.
Two more of the vaqueros dropped from their mounts and moved towards the kneeling man curiously.
‘Are you sure Pedro fired only once?’ one of them asked in amazement.
‘How many bullets hit him, Pepe?’ another vaquero queried.
Gomez looked at the approaching men. ‘Just one. I think he was dead before he had a chance to fire again.’ Both vaqueros stopped.
‘Was he shot in the back?’
Gomez rose up and shook his head. ‘No, amigos. This was no ambush. Pedro had a showdown with someone and he lost. Whoever it was who shot him was either the luckiest of men or the most deadly shot I have ever seen.’
There was a stunned silence. None of them could imagine who could have outdrawn Ruiz and used just one bullet to end his life. It seemed impossible. They had all seen Ruiz shoot the head off a chicken from the back of a galloping horse. Who could have bettered Pedro Ruiz?
Gomez studied the churned-up ground thoughtfully. He looked at the others and then pointed to the dense woodland to his right.
‘Pedro’s horse went that way.’
‘What shall we do, Pepe? Should we follow?’
Gomez removed his sombrero and ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair.
‘Luis shall take Pedro’s body back to the hacienda and inform Don Miguel of what has happened.’ Gomez said firmly. ‘The rest of us shall make camp here and when the sun rises again we shall follow the tracks to find and kill the murderer.’
‘Who do you think did this, Pepe?’ Gomez returned his hat to his head and tightened its drawstring. His eyes cast across the faces of the seven others in turn.
‘Only the Devil himself could have done this, amigos.’